Samantha Power and the Subtle Invocation
Samantha Power has a review essay on the Democrats and foreign policy, and she rightly gives Matt Yglesias’s excellent Heads in the Sand a strongly favorable notice. I recommend the piece on the strength of her wise endorsement alone.
I have to say, though: she says some things I find highly unconvincing, and some that are simply strange, e.g.,
McCain has pledged to continue many of Bush’s national security policies. He backed Bush’s invasion of Iraq, he raised the possibility of military action against Iran, and he deplored granting the right of habeas corpus to detainees. He has three main tactics for seizing public trust in the area of national security. The first is to invoke, however implicitly, his own military service. When Obama criticized McCain for his refusal to support Senator Jim Webb’s proposal to increase college tuition benefits for recent veterans, McCain lashed out: “I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.”
Obama did attack, and indeed lecture, McCain for his considered judgment on the Webb bill — about which, incidentally, I had pretty mixed feelings myself. I knew plenty of smart people on both sides. In the end, I think, like Ray Campbell of IAVA and Phil Carter of Intel Dump, that it is probably a good idea. But it certainly wasn’t a no-brainer. Anyway, how else was McCain supposed to respond? Is he obligated to never raise the fact that he has deep familiarity with military affairs and that Obama does not? Power makes this sound sinister when it’s obviously not — it’s a fact.
Power attempts to draw contrasts between Democratic and Republican approaches that will prove politically effective. Let’s just say that I think Republicans shouldn’t be too concerned about firing back if necessary. All that said, Power is clearly deeply knowledgeable, and I found the piece pretty stimulating.
In McCain’s world, if you’re not a soldier, you don’t get to voice an opinion. That’s not sinister? He wasn’t attacking Obama’s lack of familiarity with the military—he was attacking Obama’s values, and that of everyone else who chose not to join the military (even during a time of relative peace like the early 1980s when Obama would have been about the right age to sign up.)
There’s a huge difference between, say, “who hasn’t spent as much time in the military as I have” and “who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform”. As little sense as the “chicken hawk” argument makes, the “chicken dove” argument makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Civilians have every right to question and lecture McCain’s moral judgment on issues like the Webb bill, torture, taxes, the “low-road”, and Carol Shepp. It’s not like I’m judging whether he gets to pass through the pearly gates—by asking to become president, he has forced every civilian voter in this country to judge his moral judgment.
He’s a complicate figure I don’t think we’ll ever really truly understand, who’s demonstrated both great heroism and great cynicism.
— Consumatopia · Aug 4, 03:42 AM · #
He was doing some of each; McCain suffered 6 years in captivity; why the mentors of Obama, like William Ayers, were waging war on the homefront,sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally (as in the attempted attack on the Ft. Dix dance hall) He was not making an explicitly Heinleinian argument out of Starship Troopers; but since you can’t throw the ‘chickenhawk card’ anymore, you either demean the service of the speaker (as Blumenthal did with the first George Bush, and followed through against Dole) or you change the subject again. He’s been quite clear of his loathing for aggressive interrogation, relating it to his own experience at the Hanoi Hilton; but he leaves open the possibility of such practices being applied at some time in the future. He was right about
‘the surge’ but more specifically about the application ofcounterinsurgency to accentuate the Anbar Awakening, than Sen. Webb’s talk of retreat, would have brutally extinguished; likely turning Iraq into another one of Dr. Power’s case studies in genocide.
— narciso · Aug 5, 03:23 AM · #
He was not making an explicitly Heinleinian argument out of Starship Troopers
Yeah, he was making that very same nonsensical argument.
you change the subject again
Wrong—McCain changed the subject by attacking everyone who chose not to join the military when there wasn’t a major war going on, when there wasn’t a call by national leaders for people to abandon their civilian careers to don a uniform—when, in fact, we were about to win the Cold War by the superior performance of our civilian economy.
Samantha Powers was absolutely right to call out his madness.
He’s been quite clear of his loathing for aggressive interrogation, relating it to his own experience at the Hanoi Hilton; but he leaves open the possibility of such practices being applied at some time in the future.
By being the key force behind the Military Commissions Act and refusing to forbid torture by the CIA, he has totally flip-flopped on torture—permitting ongoing torture today, not at some point in the future. The North Vietnamese were in an infinitely more desperate situation than we are today—if it was wrong then (and it sure as hell was), it’s wrong now.
John McCain’s service in Vietnam was honorable. His behavior since then—not so much. What I used to think were stands of principle, what I used to admire him for, turned out to be posturing for the cameras. Until the Military Commissions Act, the man had my vote. From then on, he had my disgust.
— Consumatopia · Aug 5, 01:37 PM · #